Spanish Real Property Company Limited


Company Number: SC000683
Date of Incorporation: 26 May 1876
Contact Details: 28 Abercromby Place, Edinburgh, EH3 6QE
Operating Details: Dissolved 24 August 1990
Other names (if known):
Function of Company*: Property Management (9111) (presumed)
Headquarters/Base of Operations Location: Not known- possibly Glasgow
Area of Operation: Presumably Huelva region of Spain- see below

*Taken from Standard Industrial Classification 2003, as used by Companies House in 2010

Records


No records of this company appear to exist in any archive, including the National Archives of Scotland.

Company History


I have been unable to find any trace of this company in any archive. However given the date of formation and the name (which was not changed) it would appear that this company had some relationship with the copper mines in the Huelva region of Spain, which was the major area of Scottish investment in Spain in the period that the company was formed. It may be that this company was bought into being to manage the property owned by the Tharsis Company (which was a Scottish registered company and was based in Glasgow). Tharsis, and the other large extraction companies like the Rio Tinto Company and Mason and Barry, owned both mining facilities, and ran considerable company villages for their work force. SG Checkland, who wrote on the Tharsis Mines, has stated that by the mid-1870s the owners of the Company were very much concerned about the state of the mine villages, and so the Spainish Real Property Company might have been set up to better the facilities. According to Checkland, the holdings of the Tharsis Company included schools and churches, and from the 1870s featured a greater level of planning and consistency in design. This company was dissolved in 1990, which seems to reflect s period of streamlining within Tharsis PLC itself.

See SG Checkland ‘The Mines of Tharsis’ (George Allen & Unwin; London, 1967) for further details.